Concert for horn and voice in romagnolo dialect
for voice, horn and elaborated horn sounds with spatialization
surround diffusion 7.1
music Luigi Ceccarelli
text Nevio Spadoni
Compagnia Teatro delle Albe
screenplay Marco Martinelli, Ermanna Montanri
scenes and costums Ermanna Montanari Cosetta Gardini
light designer Vincent Longuemare
on stage
Alcina: Ermanna Montanari
the sister : Giusy Zanini
dogs/knights: Francesco Antonelli, Alessandro Bonoli, Luca Fagioli,
Roberto Magnani, Alessandro Renda
total duration: 57′
sound realization: Edison Studio – Roma, Ravenna Teatro
horn player – Michele Fait, from “Respiri” by Luigi Ceccarelli, Produced at Studio Agon — Milan
Production La Biennale di Venezia, Ravenna Festival, Ravenna Teatro
The Dulling of Alcina
In a country village in Romagna, not far from Ravenna, there lived two sisters. The younger was her father favourite and he called her “the princess”. The elder was called Alcina (her father, a keen reader of the Orlando furioso, named her after Ariosto’s sorceress). One day the father left them, they didn’t see him any more and heard nothing about him. They inherited his job and became the supervisors of the dogs home in the heart of the village. One day a young foreigner, said to be very handsome, came to the village and began to frequent the sister’s house. The princess fell madly in love with him. After a few months the handsome young man left as suddenly as he had arrived.
CD – L’ Isola di Alcina
Concert for horn and romagnola voice
Edition Ravenna Teatro
2000
total duration: 55′
He left the girl without saying anything and she went crazy, couldn’t look after herself. Alcina decided to take care of her sister’s everyday needs and keep her there in the big house. The two were often seen walking down the main street of the village, side by side and hand in hand. They would arrive at the dogs home, stop for a while at the gate and then go back home. Alcina had a deep, hoarse voice and authoritative gestures: she aroused fear. She greeted people only with a glance. The two sisters are now very old. The princess still has her high adolescent voice, laughs without reason and greets passers-by in song. People say that unknown to her sister Alcina also took her pleasure with the young foreigner.
rappresentazioni dell’Isola di Alcina
Jun 8-10, 00 – Venice (Ita), Biennale, Teatro Goldoni
Jun 22-23, 00 – Ravenna (Ita),Ravenna Festival, Teatro Comunale di Cervia
Jul 15-16, 00 – Longiano (Ita), “Santarcangelo dei Teatri” Teatro “Petrella”
Jul 23 Lug 00 – Benevento (Ita), Festival teatrale
Oct 13-25, 00 – Milano (Ita), Milanooltre, Teatro di Porta Romana
Nov 23, 00 – Lecce (Ita), Cantieri Teatrali Koreia
Nov 25-26, 00 – Bari (Ita), Teatro Kismet
Nov 29, 00 – Latina (Ita), Teatro Comunale
Nov 7-10, 00 – Ravenna (Ita), Teatro Alighieri, Stagione Teatrale
Jan 19-20, 01 – Modena (Ita), Teatro delle Passioni
Jan 22, 01 – Bologna (Ita), Teatro Testoni
Feb 23, 01 – Cagli (Ita), Teatro Comunale
Mar 27-28, Apr 01, 01 – Cagliari (Ita), Auditorium
Mar 14-17, 01 – New York (USA), Kitchen Theater
Jun 8-9, 01 – Buti (Ita), Incontri Italo Francesi, Teatro Francesco di Bartolo
Jul 25, 01 – Cividale del Friuli (Ita), Mittelfest
Jan 20 Gen 02 – Pegognaga (Mantova) (Ita), Teatro Comunale, Stagione Teatrale
Jan 22 Gen 02 – Ivrea (Ita), Teatro Giacosa
Feb 22-23 Feb 02 – Parma (Ita), Teatro al Parco
Mar 5 Mar 02 – Pescara (Ita), Teatro Michetti
Mar 1-2 Mar 02 – Roma (Ita), Teatro Valle
Apr 11, 02 – Lisbona (Port), Festival Europa, Grande Auditorio
Apr 17-18, 02 – Prato (Ita), Teatro Metastasio
Dec 17, 02 – Lugo di Romagna (Ita), Teatro Rossini
Dec 19, 02 – Faenza (Ita), Teatro Masini
Dec 21, 02 – Bagnacavallo (Ita), Teatro Goldoni
Mar 18, 03 – Arles (France), Théatre d’Arles
Mar 22-23, 03 – Villeneuve D’Ascq (France), La Rose des Vents
Apr 26-27, 03 – Chambery (France), Espace Malraux – Théâtre Dullin
Mar 27, 03 – Marne-la-Vallée (France), La Ferme du Buisson
Oct 17-19, 03 – Paris (France), Festival Les Italiens – Comédie des Champs Elysées
Nov 12, 03 – Mons (Belgique), Théâtre Royal
Nov 15, 03 – Anvers (Belgique), Festival Europalia, De Singel
Mar 18-20,05 – Ravenna (Ita), Nobodaddy, Teatro Rasi
May 17, 06 – Spello (Ita), Teatro Comunale
May 20, 06 – Padova (Ita), Piccolo Teatro
“…e Alcina stia ne la sua pena”. Orlando furioso (X, 58)
Our starting point to represent Alcina’s furious daze will be here, where Ariosto pays her off. Her appearence turns by charm or a fixed destiny in a Romagnolo Alcina, time stops in her most fatal day, becoming all her days: the uselessness of the love obsession. In the poem n°VI, before Alcina loose her charming power (that makes her able to seduce and to change men into something else) before to be entirely reduced in her torturing and incurable pain for Ruggero, she’s shown as representing all the liars and tricksters building traps for the insane human illusions. She’s the owner of a world reduced to the magic power of the occult, to the common fraud that permeates life. She’s a false semblance, her face doesn’t correspond to what is in her heart, she’s a disjunction between image and substance.
We have superimposed the daze of two sisters in the Romagnolo countryside, entrangled in a charm of love traps, everyone in its unsuccessful correspondence between image and substance, as in the effects of magic, on Orlando furioso’s page. We asked Nevio Spadoni, poet in romagnolo dialect, to compose the poem of this Alcina of ours, petrified in her pain, lamentation and curse.
The language also changes its aspect and become dialect, wild language, obstinate voice, unintelligeble sound, entrangled in the “inestricabil ragna” (XIV, 52) of the love torment, “int e’ rispir longh de’ vent/ ch’e’ smesa l’acva int e’ su pas” .
There’s no action, no drama: only a vagabond voice wandering around, a vision where you could get lost as in the crash of dreams.